Episode-797- Avoiding Prepper Burn Out

I have received a ton of comments and emails lately with the term “prepper burn out”, used in them. The reality is much of this is seasonal, I am now going into my fourth Christmas season producing this show and I can tell you, “burn out” for many is part of the good old fashioned “winter blues”. Hell the shorter days, cold nights and dampness make you down enough, thinking about the threats out there sure as hell doesn’t make things any brighter.

Yet the issue is real, it is also why I spend a ton of time on subjects such as gardening, permaculture, health, cooking, etc. Some criticize me for this, stating stupid nonsense such as “today I REALLY prepared unlike yourself”. Such fools probably think listening to some shock jock ramble on about the new world order while cleaning a gun they never fired is “really prepping”.

So today I am going to go over some of my favorite positive aspects of prepping and how they can be done for little to no money. Because I believe this is another cause of “burn out”, a person preps to a level they financially can, they know what else they should do but can’t do it now due to fiscal reasons. Being reminded about the hole in their energy redundancy doesn’t really help them on a daily basis.

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Off work today and just finished listening to todays show. I really needed to hear todays message. Iam at point of I can’t financially do any more but you gave me plenty of ideas mainly to start walking again. I walked for about 3 months and stopped I thought how great I felt after walking and Iam going to start again. I also just ordered a kindle to read a bunch of the free ebooks on the national academy press site.
Thanks for all you do.

If you have access to a gym, try getting on the elliptical machine(emulates cross country skiing). It is the best aerobic activity you can do. Since there is no impact on your joints like when walking, your body recovers faster between workouts.

I think every once in a while we need a Come to Jack meeting! Miss the rants and inspiration of Jack in the car. Too much interviews, they are okay, but what really made Survival Podcast is Jack telling us to start our gardening plans, food prep. Jack is like a football coach and sometimes we need a pep talk. A good balance, couple of feedback shows, a couple interviews and at least one good old Jack inspiring us show would be a good week.

Best way I’ve found to pick up acorns is with the shop vac (and my husband gets HUGE entertainment value from seeing me “vacuum the yard”). They go from there into a trash can where i can sort them at my leisure. Goats love them!

RIGHT ON!!! I was in major burn out for a long long long time. Trying to figure out how to get out of the funk was a very hard challenge. I kept looking around trying to figure things out. What to do. How to do. It wasn’t until I actually started looking within and the DOING that I changed burn out to fired up.

Fired up is so much better. For those that say I can’t well you can if you are fired up. I am a 5′ 50 yr old woman with fibromyalgia 2 feet with plantar facitis major (foot pain) two blown thumb joints. Back pain from a broken back injury from 3 yrs ago. I gained so much weight over the last few years even my fat pants no longer fit. My list goes on and on. I can tell you that once you get fired up about something I mean really fired up you can do any thing. Today I moved 10 bales of hay 2 of those were 90 lbs and as tall as me almost. Was chucking 50 lb bags of grain up onto a table. Hauling bags of cement & 4×4 2×12, took down a wall in the barn and rebuilt a wall ( both 16″ center) plus 2 stalls. Tilled up the floor to smooth it out then covered it with stall mats.(those things are buggers to move but channel locks give a good grip and help make it easier)

I am not any more special than any one else. I am just fired up about my new pigs Black American Guinea Hogs. I will do my best to make sure my pigs and alpacas have good clean home. When I think I just can’t do it and I will wait for hubby to get home I just look at the animals 2 alpacas 3 pigs and 3 dogs all standing there staring at me (they don’t leave my side all day). When I sit on the ground they all come around for some love pats and a snack. If I need a break I just snuggle down in the hay and rest. I am in good company. All the troubles all the pain is just forgotten. That’s the power of being fired up. I will be sore beyond belief tomorrow but it is a good sore. I will go back out to the barn again, and again I will be all fired up. If I can do it so can you. Good luck and happy searching.

Great show Jack. On the “quick and dirty” list, maybe throw in some basic water filtration and/or purification capabilities. Boiling might be hard for some people with no power in a disaster situation.

Yea to a degree, the reality is though in 99% of situations you can boil water or use solar heat to pasteurize it. Steven Harris will cover that tomorrow. A filter is high on the list but I would say it goes at the bottom of the above list, it is really easy to store 50-100 gallons of water, do that first IF you are in a cash poor scenario if not, yea buy a filter NOW.

These are Jacks best shows, he will go into overdrive at the end of a show sometimes and it is an adrenaline shot. I like the ‘gruel’ comment. Little gems every once in a while. How about ‘Jack’s famous quotes’??, even if they are borrowed from elsewhere.

As for free local resources, being in Prince Edward Island, the ocean is three hundred feet from my doorstep. I go down with my tractor and harvest seaweed and shells for the garden. I take an old plastic tote, drill holes in the bottom and fill it with shells or seaweed. I let it sit out in the open for a month or two in the spring and the rain washes out the salt. I use the seaweed, or eel grass as it is sometimes called here as compost and build it into the soil. The shells (Blue Mussel) crush easily and make great mulch and the slugs impale their little bodies on it, ergo, no slug problems.

I have been having really good results taking vitamin D3. Since I live in western Washington, loooong wet gray winters really get me down. I started taking D3 about a month ago, and so far feel much better about life in general and prepping in particular.

I couldn’t agree more with Brian L. I love your passion, Jack. Not only is it catching, but it’s encouraging when we have a hard time looking at the big picture.

I loved the idea about “gruel”. I can snag some hand warmers from Sam’s Club and stuff food into buckets that I got (for free) from their bakery. Rice, corn, and beans are much better options for those of us with wheat issues. Like Jack said, not ideal, but it’s food, right?

I needed this episode bad. I wouldn’t say I was burned out but I’ve been bumming for a while. On the one hand my past year has been great, my son turned one, traveled a good bit, had my best financial year yet and a few other big hits. But, on the other I have had zero time to do any of the other things I’ve been dying to do, like garden, outdoor activities, reading, etc.

I have had a year of “longing”. I would listen to Jack and his guests (the episode on extreme early retirement had me longing like crazy), watch permaculture videos, watch hiking and outdoors sports movies. At time it felt like I was punishing myself. I even drifted on my usually solid financial and health walk.

No more. Even before I listened to todays show I knew one of my New Years Resolutions was NO MORE LONGING. This episode brought it home for me. I am planning my garden for the spring, my son will be old enough to do some outdoors stuff with me, and am just generally looking forward to living.

This type of show helps let me know im on the right track. I might listen for a second time. I did that quick and dirty list in the past and have been working on bettering the preps all the time. I think your a bit hard on people that do have a large expensive food storage. It works for some people that dont have the time. Sure it doesnt help the skill level for them but its a start. And your right on with some big purchase thats a mistake in the past. We all have it, we all are ashamed of it, and hopefully most of use can recover and learn from it.

Im liking the direction you are taking this and not keeping nor has it ever been smth where you are trying to reach the guy trying to hide in his bunker until the end of the world and trying to broaden all of our horizons. … I always feel engaged when listening to you and I don’t always agree but you do a great job.

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one little thing and I know you have worked with Val R. … check out Steve Maxwell. hes close to 60 and is a great strength trainer. I’m bringing this up cause you mentioned the repetitive workouts and it’s dangers to the body.

I totally agree with Brian L. …GREAT show today and I also really love the passion I hear coming through!! It’s a little ironic what you said about how boring it could get to eat rice n beans, because I listened to today’s show RIGHT after getting back from shopping, where I stumbled into one of my local grocers having a 50% off sale on all their “store brand” spices. Boy did I stock up!! I bought more spices today alone than I think I have in the last 20yrs. combined. No boring gruel here…. AIN’T happnin!

WHY?? Cuz I was thinking exactly what you said….before you said it – so to speak LOL

I’m kind of a new listener (couple months now) but I think I’m getting addicted. LOVE your passion and I even though I listen to AJ now and then, I love your take on paranoid doomsday ass clowns! But hey, like you said, unfortunately this industry is based on fear and fear MAY BE the only thing that consistently sells better than sex.

Personally…. I’d love to hear lots more about the entrepreneurial stuff!!

Also-love when you throw a little Army in there-the 4th point of contact gave me a laugh as a veteran 😉 It always cracks me up when I use a term then have to explain it to friend. . . trying to explain “goat rope” was fun. . .

The Inca fed their people by transforming steep slopes into farmland with the rise and run of terracing. It’s believed that more land was under cultivation during Inca times than is today in modern Peru.

Hey Jack,
Great show and very timely! I share prepper info with some friends via email and burnout seems to be an issue among some of these friends.
I see two commonalities:
1. They feel alone when it comes to preparing because their spouse is not on board, thus they meet significant resistance and/or apathy
and/or,
2. They are not sure how to prepare. It seems that some have the view that they are to stock all of the beans, bullets and Band-aids that they can, then sit back and wait for the zombie Apocalypse.

The next email that I send out will have a link to this show. Thanks once again for an awesome show!

Also, I have really liked the interview blitz that you have done over the past couple of months. For me, it’s good to hear the different experts and their perspectives. I also think that you have done a good job letting them speak, even though sometimes their opinions greatly differ from yours (ex. global warming).

About to listen. Great topic! Also another in use of some “hang in there”. It is easy, especially adding in SAD type stuff, to wonder at times “why bother carrying on.” Even just taking a basic feel of a decent amount of people around who just seem to be far out of balance in the selfish, closed off, rude, lost morals, lost in general, and those attribute departments. As well too add in the other pile of gloomy news and it’s easy to ask heavy things at times. But we must carry on. If we don’t, we are of course guaranteed failure the moment we decide to quit. As well to keep in mind, TPTB love to have the populations in a near constant state of fear, despair, confusion, division and whatever else in order to have control over them. Afterall, that’s what their game is about – control and power. Stay strong fellow “preppers”. Not wanting to use labels, we’re simply just trying to live life, but you get the drift.

Hey Jack — really good show today. Not the best from an “information” standpoint, but one of the best in terms of saying what needed to be said at the right time. I don’t agree with you on everything — but the areas of agreement far outweigh those of disagreement, and even the areas of disagreement make me think and reconsider my own attitudes and outlook.

Since you brought up National Academies Press, I think I may have one even better than that for the prepper/survivalist/homesteader crowd: Appropedia (http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia). It’s basically a wiki for appropriate technology. There are literally hundreds of old publications and technical manuals that you can download as free pdfs, the kind of stuff that was used for projects in the developing world throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s. If you can get lost in NAP, I don’t know if you’ll ever find your way out of Appropedia!

This is an excellent podcast!! I think it has earned a permanent spot on my iPod. I plan on listening to it at least once a month, or more often if needed. After listening to Michael Stein, I really needed to hear this.

Another way to combat prepper burnout with a free resource is getting a damn library card and spending an hour or so browsing. I live in a moderate sized city and the library system here has all kinds of books on gardening, plant identification, alternative energy, finance, cooking, homesteading, how-to books, medical stuff, survival themed fiction/non-fiction, etc. that would be of interest to preppers. Your batteries might charge up a little bit when you have all that information at your disposal.

Hey Jack-here is a good topic for you for a listener feedback show. Maybe I will give them a try again.

Preppers Are Now Considered To Be Potential Terrorists.

If you and your family store up lots of food, will you be identified as “potential terrorists” by law enforcement authorities? That sounds like an insane question, but sadly it has gotten to the point where “preparing for the worst” has become a “suspicious activity”.

Overblown bullshit, just reality there, tune in Monday to hear more then you can bitch one more time about the fact that the show is commerical and that we have music and I will get the pleasure of banning your ass. LOL.

This may be a bit late, as I just got around to this show… but please do a show on further breaking down the 5 things you can do for a simple plan. I truly enjoyed some of the quick and simple things you recommended that cost next to nothing for those of us starting out or on a low budget. THanks!